IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Oil prices spike on Libya unrest; Gettin' gassy at the Oscars; Hidden costs of coal; Air pollution deadlier than cocaine ... PLUS: Unrest in the Midwest, powered by Koch (the Billionaire Koch Brothers, that is) ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Oil held near 2-1/2 year highs on Tuesday, with worries about turmoil in Libya that sent prices soaring the previous session eased by expectations that OPEC and the International Energy Agency could meet any shortfall in oil supplies.

At least three international oil companies have halted production in Libya, which pumps nearly 2 percent of world output.

The industry, which is pouring billions of dollars into drilling across Pennsylvania, also is spending millions more in lobbying and political campaign contributions. Unlike most states, Pennsylvania has no limits on individual campaign contributions or gifts to public officials.

Consol, traditionally a coal company based in Canonsburg, found at least two takers for the Steelers' appearance earlier this month in the Super Bowl: two state senators, including their chamber's highest-ranking member, who flew at Consol's expense to Dallas.

It raises the question of why an advanced wealthy country is so compelled to sacrifice the integrity of swathes of productive land for financial gain from exporting a resource which we don't need for our own energy needs. This sacrifice flies in the face of a Federal Government report from its Science, Engineering and Innovation Council indicating that Australia could become a net importer of food, ifas seems inevitable the country's population continues to grow and climate change cuts agricultural production.

The United States' reliance on coal to generate almost half of its electricity, costs the economy about $345 billion a year in hidden expenses not borne by miners or utilities, including health problems in mining communities and pollution around power plants, a study found.
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The estimate of hidden costs takes into account a variety of side-effects of coal production and use. Among them are the cost of treading elevated rates of cancer and other illnesses in coal-mining areas, environmental damage and lost tourism opportunities in coal regions where mountaintop removal is practiced and climate change resulting from elevated emissions of carbon dioxide from burning the coal.
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"This is effectively a subsidy borne by asthmatic children and rain-polluted lakes and the climate is another way of looking at it," said Kert Davies, research director with the environmental activist group Greenpeace. "It's a tax by the industry on us that we are not seeing in our bills but we are bearing the costs."

In a groundbreaking article to be released this month in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, details the economic, health and environmental costs associated with each stage in the life cycle of coal – extraction, transportation, processing, and combustion. These costs, between a third to over half a trillion dollars annually, are directly passed on to the public.

In terms of human health, the report estimates $74.6 billion a year in public health burdens in Appalachian communities, with a majority of the impact resulting from increased healthcare costs, injury and death. Emissions of air pollutants account for $187.5 billion, mercury impacts as high as $29.3 billion, and climate contributions from combustion between $61.7 and $205.8 billion. Heavy metal toxins and carcinogens released during processing pollute water and food sources and are linked to long-term health problems. Mining, transportation, and combustion of coal contribute to poor air quality and respiratory disease, while the risky nature of mining coal results in death and injury for workers.

In recently filed documents, Midwest Generation signaled it might delay installing pollution controls at its six coal-fired power plants "for the maximum time available," making it more likely the aging units will keep churning out high levels of lung- and heart-damaging soot for most of the decade.
...With Republican lawmakers in Washington seeking to block tougher pollution limits proposed by the Obama administration, Midwest Generation now appears to be hedging on its next steps.

Late last year, the company secured state permits to install pollution-control equipment that would reduce soot- and smog-forming emissions from its power plants. But whether it actually makes the $1.2 billion investment depends in part on "regulatory and legislative developments," according to its latest financial documents.

Air pollution triggers more heart attacks than using cocaine and poses as high a risk of sparking a heart attack as alcohol, coffee and physical exertion, scientists said on Thursday.
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The findings, published in The Lancet journal, suggest population-wide factors like polluted air should be taken more seriously when looking at heart risks, and should be put into context beside higher but relatively rarer risks like drug use.

Texas power plants emitted 244,248,050 tons of CO2 in 2009. They emitted 256,903,967 tons in 2010. According to the report, Texas power plants emitted more than 7 times the total CO2 emissions from power plants in California. The state has a favorable climate for wind energy, and yet Texas reportedly opened three new coal plants near the end of 2010.

The WI gov's attack on labor and renewable energy, brought to you by the Billionaire Koch Brothers:

16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state-owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker, whose bill to kill collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions has caused an uproar among state employees, might not be where he is today without the Koch brothers.

Charles and David Koch are conservative titans of industry who have infamously used their vast wealth to undermine President Obama and fight legislation they detest, such as the cap-and-trade climate bill, the health care reform act, and the economic stimulus package. For years, the billionaires have made extensive political donations to Republican candidates across the country and have provided millions of dollars to astroturf right-wing organizations. Koch Industries' political action committee has doled out more than $2.6 million to candidates. And one prominent beneficiary of the Koch brothers' largess is Scott Walker.

State budgets across the country are in disarray as a weak economy, the end of tens of billions in Recovery Act funds, and a GOP-led House that is pushing for deep cuts to many programs that benefit state and local governments set the stage for massive in shortfalls over the next two years. Instead of making the tough choices necessary to help their states weather the current crisis with some semblance of the social safety net and basic government services intact, Republican governors are instead using it as an opportunity to advance several longtime GOP projects: union busting, draconian cuts to social programs, and massive corporate tax breaks.

Protests against union-busting state bills and cuts to state programs are spreading from Wisconsin across the country today. In Montana, the environment is front and center as protesters challenge Governor Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, on his budgetary plans, which they say cut health, environmental, and labor programs to pay for corporate tax cuts.

The two key arguments that the oil and gas industry is using to fight federal regulation of the natural gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing --- that the costs would cripple their business and that state regulations are already strong --- are challenged by the same data and reports the industry is using to bolster its position.

To You Faded Believers Selfishly Scaring Our Kids With: DEATH BY CO2:
In Southern Ontario, the city of London Ontario Canada has not had one single smog day in over 5 years, just alerts to a possible smog day, (a "smog warning").
And you still insist on condemning our children to a death by unstoppable warming? Pollution is real, death by SUV gas was not.
If you faded doomers had any credibility at all, you would stop calling unstoppable warming "severe weather" snowstorms and cold snaps. It's a death threat, not disagreeable weather and we former believers promise you this, history will not be kind to this CO2 evnironMENTAL era.
Has this great source of news reported that the Republicans pulled all American funding from the IPCC on Feb 20th?
Climate change has done to journalism and science what abusive priests and suicide bombers did for religion

Oh, Meme mine, why do you bother? Since you don’t accept the scientific evidence, there can be no ‘condemning our children to death by CO2’. So why do you care if we talk about scientific evidence and whatnot?

BTW, we're not "boomers", and we did report on House Republicans voting to defund the US contribution to the IPCC. Do you ever bother to actually read any of the articles on which you post your duplicate comment spam, over and over and over again?

In your incoherence you apparently don't understand that while Republicans in the House voted for that --- along with many, many other provisions that directly defund the EPA's ability to enforce laws and regulations protecting the environment about which you claim to care so much --- their radical amendments are unlikely to pass the Senate or be signed by the President.

Please avail yourself of the many, many online sources of primary scientific literature to gain a better understanding of the issues we’re talking about. Come back when you have some actual scientific evidence, and are willing to discuss it coherently.